Unleash Your Curiosity

Choose a query for your API call

Time to get started! In this challenge, we will be using the Twitter API. The first task in this challenge is simply to identify a query that interests you. You might already have one in mind, or you may need to spend some time and think about one.

Perhaps you are passionate about politics or a particular current event. Maybe it's your city or a certain area of science. A sports team? A feeling? A recent news story? For example, try out a twitter search on "toronto," "peer review," "python" or "#hungry".

Click on the links above. Try some of your own queries and skim through the results to see if you're happy with your query.

To complete this challenge, post below at least one query that interests you and consistently returns several results. In particular, if you choose something too unusual or esoteric, there might not be any results, and that woudn't be much fun.

Beyond having enough results, what makes a good query? How about a bad query? Some things to think about include how specific or general a query is, how time-sensitive, possible synonyms, overloading of hash tags, etc.

Task Discussion

dumpa said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/tedx

https://twitter.com/#!/search/feliz

https://twitter.com/#!/search/blue

on June 5, 2012, 5:17 p.m.
manicphase said:

I will be collating tweets about #occupy.

on June 1, 2012, 5:56 p.m.
Daniel said:

my query is #bmx

on May 31, 2012, 7:27 p.m.
Alex said:

Hi again! My query is for the query term "curation". It's something I've been following for many years now, through a method called content analysis. We have been monitoring the "curation" discussion since about 2009.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/curation

on May 22, 2012, 5:06 p.m.
Robin said:

Hello - I am in the process of developing my search query. I want to create a query for a conference whose hashtag is #unccause. The Twitter search documentation (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/using-search) states the following in the "Limitations" section:

"The Search API is not complete index of all Tweets, but instead an index of recent Tweets. At the moment that index includes between 6-9 days of Tweets."

However, the "Search Operators" section discusses the use of the since and until operators. It seems to indicate that the since operator can be used to display tweets that were displayed since a certain date. Is the page stating that the since operator is limited to dates only 9 days in the past? Or am I missing something? Perhaps the search query and the since operator are two different entities - and I missed that.

Thanks for any suggestions you have.

on May 19, 2012, 10:17 a.m.

Jessy Kate Schingler said:

hey robin! i didn't know about the "since" operator. that's a great question - i'm not sure! the main thing i would do is try it... it's possible that the "since" operator only works within that 9 day timespan. i just tried it with a few user names and couldn't pull out any results further back than 9 days, but i only tried a couple. eg. searching for schingler or jessykate. hth!

on May 20, 2012, 11:52 a.m. in reply to Robin
Rajul said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23formula-one

on May 19, 2012, 5:17 a.m.
Alex Hite said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/diablo%203

on May 16, 2012, 2:21 p.m.
Anonym said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/gluten%20free

on May 14, 2012, 5:28 a.m.
dilys said:

feeling bubbly and feel like champagne!

https://twitter.com/#!/search/champagne

on May 10, 2012, 9 a.m.
Alexandro Infantes said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/drupal

on May 8, 2012, 4:37 p.m.
aphixe said:

Here is some queries to try out.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23hashtag

https://twitter.com/#!/search/greeneggsandham

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23failblog

on April 30, 2012, 2:08 p.m.
Jessica Ledbetter said:

Tried a few queries including tossing some of these in hashtags but basically I wanted easy vegan recipes cause I need inspiration. Also, there seem to be more people using that wording that I realized so there will be results. Woot.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/vegan%20recipe%20easy

Tried "search" but it was just giving me top. I want to see everyone (not just the popular folks' recipe posts) so trying "realtime."

on April 18, 2012, 3:23 p.m.
dp17 said:

the suicide gilrs inspired https://twitter.com/#!/search/tattootuesday

and football https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/nufc

on April 18, 2012, 3:23 a.m.
kid.Spec said:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/martial%20arts

on April 17, 2012, 11:41 a.m.
ssmith1989 said:

Searches:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23love

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23LTFU

on April 16, 2012, 12:21 p.m.
xzorzist said:

I tried:

#babies

on April 14, 2012, 11:51 p.m.
chan said:

My query:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23earthquake

on April 14, 2012, 1:42 a.m.
ParticularGeek said:

My Query:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/geek

:D

on April 13, 2012, 11:24 a.m.
samawarad said:

My Query:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/volcano

on April 9, 2012, 3:12 a.m.